H&W may have campaigned on this, but there's two things critical to good advertising: offering what people want, and offering it credibly.
Maybe interesting to you and others largely insulated from the downsides of "a different strategy". Others might not find it so "interesting" at all ...
I can’t see how that wouldn’t lead to debasement and ultimately the collapse of the US hegemony. At least this way we will have TSMC and other local production capacity.
The status quo would be, for example:
* continuing to honor the social safety net constructed incrementally since 1929
* honoring contracts with overseas organizations
* honoring the 200+ year old understanding that Congress controls spending, creates government departments, and establishes rules for the hiring and firing of government employees
* retaining an understanding of the complex and deeply woven role of the federal government, along with the argument known as "Chestertons fence" (don't tear down a fence till you understand why it was built)
* continuing to structure taxation based on (a) the marginal value of income (b) the concept that the impact of taxation should be roughly equal no matter what your income level is
* resist the expansion of worldwide ideologies that lead to a decrease in personal liberty and/or is accompanied by the use of military force to acquire another nation's territory (we've never been close to perfect on this, but it's nice to have an ideal in mind rather than just dropping any attempt at a morally just world).
Debt is only a problem if you subscribe to heterodox ideas about how national economies with sovereign currencies operate (or worse, imagine that national economies function like household or business economies).
No need for "debasement", but sure.
> all the while ignoring the hollowing out
No, we should not be doing this. But the left has been talking about this for decades and was mocked for it. The idea that billionaires and the recipients of their largesse are how we stop "ignoring the hollowing out" just seems laughable to me.
> allowing a large portion of the population to become redundant, unproductive, and irrelevant in the world economy
when the left raised these objections to global trade treaties that ignored labo mobility, they were roundly ignored and ridiculed. Again, the idea that the very class of people who wanted these changes (free movement of capital, tax-free repatriation of profit, tariff-free importation of foreign produced goods, massively reduced labor costs) are the people who will oversee the reversal of their effects just seems laughable to me.
These are absolutely things we should focused on, and it is true that the left-as-represented-by-the-Democratic party has not really done so (certainly not until Biden, and even then it was relatively weak sauce). But the idea that this administration is actually motivated by a desire to solve these problems and not simply reduce costs and taxes for the capital class ... again, it just seems laughable to me.
> These are absolutely things we should focused on, and it is true that the left-as-represented-by-the-Democratic party has not really done so (certainly not until Biden, and even then it was relatively weak sauce).
So, you're right - up until this "regime change" not a lot has been done. And at least this is moving in approximately the right direction. Even if this is a rough amputation, at the very least it's likely to remove the tumor, when nothing up till now has done so.
To take just a single example: tariffs. It is true that if one were interested in re-growing a domestic manufacturing base, tariffs might be one tool you might use to help promote that (they also might not be). So now we have an administration that has actually gone with tariffs, but in such a ridiculous fashion that it is more or less certain that they will have no such impact on the US economy. Tariffs on! Tariffs off! Tariffs on! Tariffs off for my friends! etc. etc. In fact, the most charitable interpretation of the current tariff strategy is as a back door for more ass-kissing by companies and economic sectors.
The same applies to everything else they've done so far. This will not remove the tumor, though it may amputate enough limbs that the tumor is the least of our worries.
For example: a lot of people see massive beurocracy as a bad thing. Cutting it back, even in very rough fashion, even with potentially selfish motives, is seen as a good thing.
In your example re: tariffs. What's interesting is that tariffs are fundamentally a social exercise. You can use them with a light touch, to encourage/discourage specific industries in fine detail, or you can use them as a club to force concessions from other countries. Using it as a club requires an aggressive approach that many people don't even understand and have never themselves experienced. When you don't know how it works, it just looks dumb.
There's a lot that probably is clumsy here, but I think that making absolute statements is showing your hand a bit.
MMT does not.
We don't know who is correct. We do know that one POV is massively favored by those who would like to use the national debt as a reason to impose austerity policies on the US economy.
On the one hand we have a simple model that 1+1=2. On the other we have someone else proclaimed correct saying it’s not so. But it’s too complex for me to understand.
I'm not here to solve your problems.
The fact that you think that all economies can be reduced to something as simple as "1 + 1 = 2" is one of your problems. Good luck.
You could start by stating your assumptions and basic axioms. Rather than asserting your conclusions and name calling things heterodox.
> You could start by stating your assumptions and basic axioms.
I'm not here to write a text book on economics. I'm here to point out that "debt is bad, we can never carry on like this" is a belief, not a statement of fact.
Everything in macroeconomics is a belief, because it is clearly far from a hard science.
Common sense always applies to some degree when it is based on logic. Also my belief is that a system where there is no limits on government spending and debt seems obviously unstable and likely to become infinitely corrupt.
And yes, economics is far from a hard science and most macro is driven by some combination of personal experience and political ideology. But that doesn't mean that "non-common-sense" ideas about macro are wrong, anymore than it means that extrapolating from the "common sense" of personal experience (i.e. no limits on your own spending and debt will lead to bankruptcy) is right.
But no I don't agree with your claim. Common sense is an excellent guide and a major reason why evolution gave us large brains. And that includes the hard sciences, only failing in very specialized niches that often took centuries to find after almost everything else was well-explained by intuitive theories. Biology is not a hard science.
Morever, equating logic and common sense is to deny the recency of "logic". Humans reasoning like this, even if you want to take it back to the Sumerians, is a very recent development in human experience (probably).
> Biology is not a hard science.
OK. I wonder what all that lab time and experimentation was for that I saw when I was doing my PhD in computational molecular biology (never finished). I guess it was all just ... soft.
> centuries to find after almost everything else was well-explained by intuitive theories
Darwin would like a word. As would Mendel.
Realms where our senses do not operate would be microscopic or relativistic and the like where which we have never been able to observe before. National economies are completely observable and accessible to our logic and common sense. They are akin to thermodynamics which is not counterintuitive at all.
You are arguing by example and I am countering with larger classes of examples. For someone who gives up so quick on picking winners in macroeconomics theories you sure are sure of your answer here despite any quantitative basis for your claims.
You can only say this thanks to the work of generations of previous scientists (and teachers) who managed to render the very unintuitive as intuitive.
> Realms where our senses do not operate would be microscopic or relativistic and the like
There are (a) dozens of known cognitive biases, the majority of which we cannot avoid even when we know about them (b) visual and auditory illusions. Both of these are not in the microscopic or relativistic realms, but nevertheless show clear examples of our senses (and upstream sensory processing) failing to properly inform us about the state of the world.
> National economies are completely observable and accessible to our logic and common sense.
A national economy is only "completely observable" when reduced to statistics. No individual can possibly "observe" all of a national economy, partly because it is too big and partly because parts of it are too small. A statistical summary is not without value, but is not equivalent to it being "completely observable". As for the notion that we can bring our "logic and common sense" to bear on a national economy: well, that's precisely what the arguments between orthodox and heterodox economists is all about. They are bringing their logic and common sense to bear on it, and they do not arrive at the same conclusions.
> gives up so quick on picking winners in macroeconomics theories
On the contrary, I am very much for picking winners. While the answer may not be forever (subject to new theories), I pick MMT for a winner over orthodox/mainstream theories. This is not because I am certain that MMT is correct, but more because orthodox/mainstream theories have all the hallmarks of having been invented by the winners in an economy, for the winners.
Thermodynamics is easy. I did it as a sophomore. It can be derives using statistical mechanics from classical mechanics but this is not necessary. The ideas of heat itself and its flow are ancient.
Speaking of cognitive biases, pointing out examples of errors does not provide a proof that something is worse than some unnamed alternative. Unless your argument is that we are worse at something that an omniscient and perfect version of humans. And if you go all the way back to my very first statement, I said common sense always works to some degree. I didn't say the predictions would be perfect. You are making the much-harder-to-defend argument that it disappears from value via some magical statistics effect you haven't identified.
Experimenting with a different approach might be understandable if the austerity wasn't aimed directly at killing the global goodwill that makes such monetary inflation possible - USD's status as the world reserve currency. As it stands, I don't know things would look any different if our country was being controlled by a hostile foreign power intent on destroying us.